Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  Vraki had been here. That was what had drawn the Imperials here, I wagered. Which, in turn, had attracted the Revolutionaries and the two had fought for the privilege of dying to this fucking monstrosity sprawled out before me.

  These things were Vraki’s specialty. Even though the Imperium had disapproved, he’d always had a talent for calling nith hounds. He must have summoned it to cover for him. But what was he doing while it was?

  I found the answer against the ruined wall.

  A faint scorch mark was smeared across the ruined stone, and surrounding it were blackened sigils that had once glowed brightly. Anchoring sigils, I realized, the work of a wright who knew how to stabilize a portal. Riccu the Knock had been with him. He had opened the portal. The sigils had kept it open, but where did it lead? And who had gone through it?

  The answer crept into my head on cold, skittering legs. I remembered Stark’s Mutter, the corpse that had screamed, the message he had given me.

  The children who had vanished.

  Vraki had taken them through a portal, somewhere far away. The realization made my scars ache, made my eyes burn.

  We’d taken too fucking long. Too much time wasted on Liette, on Cavric, on her fucking touches and his fucking whining. They’d gotten away. They’d taken the children. They’d taken everything from me and—

  Something whispered in my head. Something burned softly at my hip. The Cacophony seethed quietly, bade me breathe deep. I did so, smelled the cold air and the tang of blood. I let go of the thought and held on to the hilt of the gun.

  It burned in me, chased away the cold thoughts, gave me room to think.

  Portals were magic, but magic had limits. To haul that many people through, it couldn’t have extended too far. The nith hound hadn’t yet dissipated into nothingness as its corpse was called back to whatever hole it had been yanked out of. We weren’t too far behind. Vraki was still heading somewhere.

  And I knew how to find out where.

  I let go of the Cacophony, whispered a word of thanks. He was looking out for me, when no one else was. We made a deal, he and I. He still remembered it.

  I headed back down the hill, away from the corpses. I was ready to tell Liette and Cavric what I had found, ready to show them proof that we couldn’t waste more time here. I wasn’t ready for the sight of them standing side by side, watching a dozen man-sized pyres burn across the grassland.

  I can’t say why I didn’t call out to them. Or why I walked a little slower and more silently as I approached them. Maybe I didn’t want to interrupt this, knowing how much it meant to them. Or maybe I just wasn’t done hurting from what she had said.

  “Thanks.” Cavric’s voice rose on the darkness. “For the fire.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I guess it was stupid, though. She was right. They are just bodies.”

  Liette didn’t reply. She didn’t say a word as they stared over the burning bodies. Cavric’s sigh came so heavy, I thought he’d collapse under its weight.

  “I just wanted them to have peace. Guess I was too late for that, though.” He shook his head. “Waste of life. Waste of time. She was right. She was right about—”

  “She wasn’t.” Liette’s voice came curt and cold as a knife. “Neither are you.” She gestured to the bodies. “She saw empty corpses. You saw people you failed.”

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  She hesitated a moment. “Sinew. Skin. Three hundred twenty pairs of muscles. Two hundred six bones. Endless amounts of nerves and blood and everything else that makes up a person, alive or dead.”

  “You act like they’re machines.”

  “They are,” Liette said. “That’s only a bad thing if you don’t appreciate what a machine can do. Neither of us know what these people did when they were alive, whose lives they improved, what they managed to fix. They simply… did it. And now we did this. And in doing so, we fixed one more thing.”

  “Huh,” Cavric said. “Didn’t expect you to be the type to understand this.”

  “I understand things that need fixing,” she said. “I understand broken things.” She closed her eyes. “I understand her.”

  I felt something cold twisting inside me, hearing that. A close and tender ache, closer than even my scars.

  Maybe it wasn’t that Liette didn’t understand words. Maybe it was that she understood them too well. Maybe she could see that behind whatever legends there were about me, whatever threats and curses they made when they spoke of me, whatever weight my name carried, it was all just words.

  Words that just hid me. Just one more broken thing.

  And maybe that’s why I didn’t say anything as I watched the fires burn, as I watched the smoke rise into the sky, as I watched the bodies blacken.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE SCAR

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sensitive sort. And not just in that way you say you are when you want to impress someone pretty. I can appreciate the value of mourning as much as anyone.

  But come the fuck on, we still had a schedule to keep.

  Reasonable, right? I had thought so when I made my case to Cavric as to why we needed to keep moving. He had disagreed, of course, citing numerous reasons—respect for the dead, reflecting on the horror, and so on—that I might have found compelling in other circumstances.

  But, well, I was the one with the weapons, so…

  My attentions were on my sword, quietly cleaning it as the Iron Boar’s growling engines carried the rattling heap of iron across the plains toward a distant destination. Congeniality, curled up beside me, let out quiet chirping noises now and again as Liette stood nearby, thumbing through a Revolutionary engineering manual she had found and pausing to occasionally chuckle at its contents, but that was as close to talking as we got in that Boar.

  It was nice.

  Good morning.

  Mind you, it was decidedly less so once I heard the voice in my head.

  Halt your vehicle and silence your engines, if you’d be so kind.

  “What was that?”

  Cavric’s voice was hoarse with worry as he looked around, terrified. I couldn’t quite answer him yet. While I knew those thoughts weren’t coming out of my head—or his—I didn’t quite know where they were coming from.

  I’d really rather hate to resort to killing you.

  But I was getting a good idea.

  “Who is that?” Cavric whispered. “What’s happening?”

  “Quiet.” I slid Jeff back into its sheath as I got to my feet and looked around. “It’s just telepathy.”

  “Just telepathy?” he all but screamed.

  “Be calm,” Liette cautioned. “Its power is limited so long as you don’t think too loudly.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  Ah, good, I’m dealing with someone with passing knowledge of the arts. The voice in my head was lyrical in tone, pointed in its eloquence. To whom am I speaking?

  “This…” Cavric, finally catching on, struggled to find the proper tone to communicate with a guy speaking inside his skull. “This is Low Sergeant Cavric Proud of the Glorious—”

  “A gentleman always introduces himself first,” I brusquely cut him off. “Or are we not dealing with an officer of the Imperium?”

  Ah, where are my manners. A laugh echoed inside my head—that sort of airy, fake laughter that told me I was dealing with a dickhead. You have the pleasure of conversing with Imperial Judge Karthrien yun Acalpos.

  “What’s a judge doing all the way out here?”

  My cavalry has been dispatched at the request of Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Athura the Fourteenth, in response to a skirmish with some nul scum. I beg your forgiveness in assuming the worst of you, but seeing a Revolutionary mechanical abomination fleeing the scene causes me some concern.

  “We didn’t do anything!” Cavric protested to the thin air. “We just saw it! We were… we…” His face screwed up as he looked at me. “How do I, like… Should I just think about it and they see i
t or what?”

  “Not like that, idiot,” I snapped.

  Oh, well done, madam. But you might have told him earlier. I can already see the scene in his head. My, my, what a mess. He chuckled inside my skull. Shall we do this politely? You lot pull over and let us conduct a civil investigation over what you know?

  “We’ve got a schedule to keep,” I replied, “so if you wouldn’t mind fucking off out of our head now…”

  There’s hardly a need for rudeness. I’d hate to bring my birds down upon you.

  “You said cavalry, right?” I asked. “There’s not a bird alive that can move faster than this thing.” I rapped the metal of the Boar’s interior. “And you know that, so you wouldn’t tell us to stop unless you knew you could catch us, am I right?” I peered out the slitted windows of the Boar, searching the fields. “Am I, Karthrien?”

  Oh, clever. I do, indeed, have my ways. I’d simply hate to waste them on what could be a civil discussion. Now, kindly offer us your response. Will this surrender be peaceable?

  As impressive as the ability to read minds sounds, telepathy isn’t considered a high art. To truly glimpse into the bundle of anxieties, fears, and hatreds that make up another human’s mind is to spend the next few days crying into a bucket. Hence, its only true use is to convey and read surface thinking: the immediate and deliberate thoughts that pop up in a human’s mind.

  Like the thought I was having at that moment as I immediately and deliberately envisioned Karthrien, or what I imagined him to look like, picking up a sloshing chamber pot, lifting it to his lips, and—

  Oh, you are depraved. His thoughts resonated angrily in my skull. What scum am I communicating with?

  “No one,” I replied. “Just a traveler.”

  Really? That’s not what your friend is thinking. If I just peer into his head, I can see…

  There was a long pause.

  By the Empress. You’re…

  I sighed. No use hiding it anymore, thanks to Cavric’s wandering thoughts.

  “Sal the Cacophony,” I said. “Yeah.”

  There was a longer pause.

  The Vagrant?

  I knew he couldn’t see it, but I couldn’t help but grin. “So, you’ve heard of me, huh?” I asked. “Nice things?”

  There was a much longer pause.

  And then, I got an answer.

  There was the distant whistle of air torn apart, a faint sound of electricity crackling, a quiet whisper of something flying. And then, a second later, everything got way too fucking loud.

  Cavric screamed. Congeniality leapt to her feet, shrieking. Liette clung to a bench to stay upright. The engines roared and metal groaned. The Boar went rocking on its treads as something hit its side like a boulder. A great rent scarred itself across the vehicle’s armor, arcs of blue electricity dancing across the wound.

  I peered out the great gaping hole in the Boar’s side and saw a shadow swooping across the earth. The outline of a slender body and huge wings slid across the ground, pulled up alongside the Boar, and slowed down. I heard the crackle of electricity again.

  “Get fucking down!” I screamed.

  More for my own benefit than anyone else’s. No one else, human or bird, knew what was happening as a bolt of lightning fell out of a clear sky and struck the Boar again, rocking it on its wheels.

  There was an angry roar of metal and fire, followed by a decidedly less impressive hiss of steam. I heard a clunking sound as something came unhinged underneath the Boar and I felt us begin to slow.

  “What was that?” Cavric demanded.

  “Thunderbow,” Liette muttered, adjusting her glasses.

  “What?”

  “A bow that shoots thunder—how much clearer does it have to be?” I growled.

  “Thunder isn’t something you can shoot!” Cavric protested.

  “I didn’t fucking name the thing,” I snapped back.

  “Whatever it is, it grazed the engine,” Cavric said, tugging madly on the controls. “I can keep her going, but not for much longer.”

  “I suspect that was the point,” Liette observed, staring at the rent in the hull.

  “What makes you say that?”

  I stared out the hole in the Boar’s side. Over a hill, I saw distant figures come loping on great, avian legs. Their beaks and feathers, tinted with Imperial violet, came starkly into view. And by the time they were close enough for me to make out their weapons, I could see the crests upon the breastplates of the Imperial cavalry.

  “Cavaliers,” I muttered. I rushed to the Boar’s door, started pulling it open. “Can you fix this thing? Either of you?”

  “I can fix it or I can pilot it, but I can’t do both,” Cavric said.

  “A Relic engine’s nature remains a mystery to everyone,” Liette replied. “I doubt even their masters know how it truly works. Regardless, the reliant machinery it powers is a buffoon’s work, easily fixed and—”

  “Yes or no,” I growled.

  She narrowed her eyes, plucked a quill from her hair. “Of course I fucking can.”

  “Great. Do what you can,” I said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “What?” Alarm crossed her face. “What ‘rest’? What are you planning?”

  I couldn’t hear him over the roar of wind as I pulled the door open. I drew the Cacophony, heard his brass giggle as I flipped his chamber open and loaded three shells. I glanced at Cavric over my shoulder.

  “Man, if I had a plan, I probably wouldn’t be doing shit like this.”

  I let out a sharp whistle. Congeniality came lurching toward the door. She glanced, curious, out at the plains roaring beneath the Boar’s treads. Then, she crouched, readying herself and leapt out.

  And I followed.

  She didn’t so much as break a stride as I landed in the saddle and took hold of her reins. So many hours riding in a noisy metal box had left her legs aching. And while I couldn’t quite tell the emotion behind the squawking sound she loosed, I liked to think it was bloodthirsty and ready for a fight.

  Goodness knows she was about to have one.

  As the Boar pulled ahead, I saw them. Their feathers were pristine ivory tipped with amethyst. Their slender legs moved in perfect harmony, long beaks thrust forward like lances. Their riders, in polished armor and crested helmets, rolled with their gait with expertise, a chorus of weapons alight with flamewritten sigils held high overhead in anticipatory triumph.

  Imperium Cavaliers. A dozen of the prettiest people you’d ever have the pleasure to be murdered by. Whatever you might have thought about their shining armor and graceful steeds, every man and woman was a trained killer equipped with magical weaponry and each bird beneath them was a fearless fighter bristling with razor beaks and claws.

  If we had driven through the night, we would have passed them. But someone had to go and have compassion for the dead.

  I held the Cacophony high as I pulled on my bird’s reins, sending her closer to the pack of cavalry. They spotted me immediately, shifted seamlessly from pursuit to battle formation. Those armed with bows fell behind as six birds strode to the front, their riders wielding brass-colored polearms. A shout went up from the lead rider, and in response, the heads of their weapons erupted into fire.

  Flameglaives. Fucking perfect.

  I aimed the Cacophony at them as they veered, tongues of fire forming roaring lances as they spurred their mounts toward me. I narrowed my eyes, aimed a little lower, right in their path, and I pulled the trigger.

  Hoarfrost shot out, struck the earth. Two birds managed to cross over it. And then…

  “HOLY SHIT!”

  The lead rider’s shout was all I heard before the groan of ice. Crystalline spikes erupted, petals on a great blue flower. Birds shrieked—the lucky ones slipped and went tumbling as ice blossomed beneath them, the unlucky letting out barely a squawk before a spike of ice punched through their frail bodies. Credit to the survivors, though—they barely even stopped, pulling themselves free from t
he frigid fracas and spurring on toward me.

  Fewer than before. But still far too many.

  Their formation broke, those still alive scattering out to avoid being hit all at once like that again. I slipped the Cacophony back into his sheath and pulled Jeff free. You might have called it foolish, pulling regular steel to fight a pack of mages. But they knew how to fight magic and how to avoid it—I’d just be throwing away shells trying to pick them off. And whatever else you might have heard, a mage wasn’t invincible just by birth. They were flesh and blood, just like you and me…

  Only they had bows that shot lightning.

  Like the one that was drawn on me when I looked back up.

  I saw the soldier’s stern face illuminated by azure light as her arrow burst to electric life. It hummed as she drew her massive, polished bow back and let it loose. I only had the presence of mind to duck out of sheer instinct. And even then, I could feel barbs of electricity pluck at my skin, pain digging into my body on tiny crackling claws, as it sailed overhead and struck the earth behind us, erupting into a blue globe of thunder and sparks.

  Congeniality let out a shriek and started fighting me for control. As though the sight of an explosion of thunder and shrieking sparks that swallowed the day and bathed the world in a hellish, destructive blue light were something to be afraid of.

  The big baby.

  The Revolution has fancy guns that make the earth shake, but they don’t have Dust. The smiths of Cathama can take a dead mage’s remains and fold it into weapons of such unnatural power that they’d match the Revolution’s biggest cannon for sheer force. Thunderbows, frostbrands, flameglaives—against such weaponry, you’d think your average blade would be about as effective as a toy.

  And in the hands of anyone else, it might be.

  But they hadn’t decided to get in the way of anyone else, had they?

  I saw the soldier drawing another arrow from her quiver and I saw my chance with it. I jerked Congeniality’s reins hard, sending her charging toward the cavalier. There was a flash of panic on the rider’s face as she realized I wasn’t running away from her. She choked—the arrow went wide, sailing past me and pricking at my flesh. Congeniality slammed against the rider’s bird, knocking her off balance as she drew another arrow. I leaned over, jammed my sword into her ribs, and tore it free in a burst of red. She toppled lifelessly from her saddle, her arrow flying high into the air.